Touchy Subject

as he got older. That said, he didn't channel all of his energy into mischief, he also poured it into his drawings. Carter was quite a skilled artist, all self taught, and often sketching on anything he could find, books, desks, and even the walls of his house. When he wasn't scribbling on the furniture, though, he was cavorting around town with a group of fellow rapscallions. Even as a married man.

One of his favorite pastimes was something called rooking. Rooks, of course, were birds very similar to the American crow in both size and color. The young men would climb up trees and reach into the rook's nest to remove the unhatched eggs, then take them home and bake them into pies. During one late night outing in eighteen thirty six, Carter had climbed some forty ft up to retrieve a few eggs. When he tried to leap from one tree to another. He came up short, though, and plummeted back

to earth. He landed hard on his back. His head was bent down and forward, with his chin touching his chest. His friends rallied around him to assess his injuries, and they were shocked to find him still breathing. Carter, weak and in pain, choked out the words pull me out as two of his mates grabbed his legs, One got behind him and managed to pull his head back into alignment. Carter almost immediately lost consciousness. They took him home to his wife, who then called for the doctor to come

and evaluate him. It looked grim too. The doctor wasn't sure he would make it through the night. Yet only a few days later, Carter woke up. He'd survived his fall, but damaged his cervical vertebrae the bones in his neck. He may have been conscious, but he was essentially paralyzed. From the neck down. Carter it was despondent to him. His life was over a punishment, he believed, or his terrible behavior in the past. He soon found religion and began to wile away the hours each day by reading

books his wife brought home for him. One particular story that piqued his interest was about a woman who had learned a sketch using her mouth after losing the use of her arms. Carter believed that he could do the same. His early pieces were unpolished. He started by having papers pinned to his pillows or using a slate to sketch using pencils and watercolors. He honed his technique over time, though, which started with his posture laying on his side with

his head propped up on some pillows. He'd have the pencil placed between his teeth so that he could reach the custom light desk that had been made for him. When he was finished with the pencil portion, he would go over parts of his drawings with a fine paintbrush dipped in India ink. It was an exhausting process, but one that bore beautiful and realistic portraits, as well as sketches of animals that seemed to jump off the page.

He even managed to write letters using the same methods. Eventually, Carter began to entertain guests as he sketched, with a woman named Anna Hanbury becoming a regular visitor to his home. She was so taken with his work that she started selling pieces to her friends for a shilling apiece. His reputation as a talented artist brought in all manner of commissions from people who were sympathetic to his condition and

the circumstances surrounding it. He also toured his hometown in a special carriage pulled by two young boys that could accommodate the couch he was bound to. Sadly, his means of conveyance also became the cause of his death. When one of the boys tripped while pulling the carriage in late May of eighteen fifty, it flipped onto its side and Carter was thrown to the ground. He passed away just over a week later from the injuries he sustained

that day. John Carter did not have a formal art education. He wasn't an upstanding member of the community, nor did he turn the art world upside down. He was just a man who had been given a second chance and used it to make the lives of those around him just a little more beautiful with nothing more than the pencil between his teeth. Hospitals have changed quite a bit since the nineteenth century, and not just the medical practices

performed inside them. These massive facilities have actually shrunk down for the years. Older hospitals used to be larger with longer hallways, so doctors and nurses certainly got their steps in while visiting patients. They were also dirty, often described as houses of death. Surgeons churned through patients as though they were slabs of meats on a butcher block. Surgeons even wore the same coat for every procedure, which was usually covered in the blood and fluids of a dozen

patients by the end of the day. Obviously, sanitation just wasn't much of a concern back then. However, some doctors like Oliver Wendell Holmes had begun speaking publicly about hospital cleanliness around eighteen. They talked about how hands were vessels for disease and that it was important to wash them often, especially between surgeries. Now, Florence Nightingale famously modernized nursing and promoted cleanliness while tending to British soldiers in India in

the eighteen fifties. Thanks to her work, good hygiene, clean water, and proper drainage became standard in medical facilities all over the world. These advancements considerably reduced mortality rates among the sick and injured. In fact, cleanliness became so important medical professionals took to using strict regimens when preparing for surgeries. One such doctor named William Stewart Halstead, was the founder

of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Whenever he and his scrub nurse prepared for a surgery, Halstead required both of them to first wash their hands with soap. Once cleaned, they would then soak their hands in a combination of potassium permanganates, mercury chloride, and a bath of hot oxylic acid. Like Holmes, Halstead also believed germs made their way into patients via the hands, so he took extreme precautions to

make sure that his were as clean as possible. The process, though, took a toll on his assistant, Caroline Hampton. Caroline suffered from both exzema and contact dermatitis as a result of the chemicals, which caused redness swelling, rashes, and a lot of discomfort. It got so bad she considered resigning from her Asian, but Halstead couldn't imagine working without her next to him. She was efficient and to him, difficult to replace, so he went looking for a solution. It didn't hurt

that he had feelings for her as well. He suggested that she cover her hands in colodeon, a viscous liquid that hardened to protect them from the harsh cleaning chemicals. Unfortunately, colodeon didn't last long and it cracked after some use, but he didn't stop there. Halstead knew of a technique for making thin, pliable rubber that had been discovered by Charles Goodyear fifty years earlier, so he commissioned the Goodyear Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio to make a pair of

gloves with gauntlets that she would wear during surgery. To ensure they fit properly, Halstead created plaster casts of Caroline's hands and had them sent to Ohio. What he got back was a set of rubber gloves that were thin enough for her to handle the various surgical instruments with ease. The gloves could also be washed and reused, so she wouldn't have to subject her delicate skin to of the various cleaning solutions that had almost ruined her career. Pretty soon,

Caroline's gloves became the talk of the hospital. Other nurses began wearing their own rubber gloves during procedures. Doctors followed suit, too, especially after Halsted's colleague, doctor Joseph Bloodgood, saying their praises, and the hospital took notice, with a rate of post stop infections dropping from seventeen to a jaw dropping two. Not long after the gloves were introduced, Halstead proposed to

Caroline and the two were soon married. She eventually did leave her position as his scrub nurse, but what she left behind changed the face of medicine for generations to come, and those gloves continued to be perfected, and today their

use has spread far beyond Johns Hopkins. Since then, hospitals, veterinary offices, and other health care facilities across the globe have adopted rubber gloves to prevent the spread of disease, and modern variations of Caroline's original coverings are still worn to this day. All because man couldn't work without the woman he planned to marry by his side. After all, you can't spell glove without love. I hope you've enjoyed

today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,